Hum 112 Week 5 Discussion 1
“Our beautiful America . . . flourished because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.”
- President Lyndon B. Johnson
Immigrants always had a crucial role to play in the American economic development. The Chinese immigrants landed on the American soil as early as 1838 in San Francisco, and their contribution to the railroad project played a huge role in shaping the American industrial development of the nineteenth century. The Asian workers were cheaper than the native workforce, and this created an outrage among the American workers, who were not able to find work due to this new found competition. This led to the exclusion act of 1882, which halted the wave of Chinese immigration for almost a decade. This was the first of a series of laws, which were enforced to restrict the immigrants from Asia, like the immigration restriction act passed in the year 1920 and the act passed in 1929 known as the National Origins Act. Only after the enactment of the 1965 immigration act, were the Chinese immigrants were allowed to relocate to the US without any restrictions.
Today millions of Indian and Chinese immigrants are landing in America to satisfy the growing demand for skilled workforce in the information technology industry, breaking the stereotype of Asian immigrants being huddled masses longing for freedom. As in the nineteenth century, there are still outcries that Asian immigrants are stealing American jobs, and according to a recent census Asian Americans are the most likely targets of hate crimes and violence. But globalization has today rendered every country to be dependent on each other, and neither West nor Asia can continue their economic progress without mutual support and co-operation. While the nineteenth century Chinese workforce was landing on America for better job prospects, the British were entering the Asian territories through use of force for finding raw material and markets for its industrial products. In this context the globalization of that period is very similar to today, where the economies of the western and the eastern world are intertwined and are dependent on each other for labor, technology and market for their goods and services.
References
Gumport, Roberta Kugell and Smith, Marcella M. University of Illinois. (2006) The Chinese Experience in Nineteenth Century America. Retrieved from http://teachingresources.atlas.illinois.edu/chinese_exp/introduction04.html
Shah, Dorothie and Rangaswamy, Padma. Asian Immigration to the United States. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/courses/amerhistory/pdf/Asian-ImmigrationL-One.pdf
Walter, Rolf. . (May 31, 2012) Economic Relations Between Europe and the World: Dependence and Interdependence. Retrieved from http://www.ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-and-the-world/economic-relations
